Nightmare Down The Road

If you think driving down East Colonial Drive in Orlando is bad now, just wait.

If you think driving down Kirkman Road north of Interstate 4 in west Orange County is bad now, just wait.

If you think driving down State Road 436 east of I-4 in Seminole County is bad now, just wait.

Just wait a few years and see how bad it really gets. The problem? There are absolutely no dollars available to fix these trouble spots. Zilch.

The gloomy truth is in a new report from regional planners: It will cost $1.3 billion between 1990 and 2005 just to keep traffic as it is now in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties. And there will be only $300 million available to do it. That leaves a $1 billion hole. Imagine it: $1 billion worth of traffic snarls.

That means dozens of major roads will turn into parking lots. Wymore Road, U.S. 192, Douglas Avenue, and on and on. These roads will need desperately to be widened in the next 10 to 15 years, but the money simply isn't there to do the whole job.

The Orlando area got into this mess because political leaders haven't insisted that services go hand in hand with growth. It was just in the past few years that governments have begun to do things such as raising gas taxes and imposing fees on developers to pay for roads.

Fortunately, there's an opportunity now to make a dent in that $1 billion deficit. The three counties can have a regional transportation authority, which could raise $188 million for road improvements in the next five years. That would help a lot, and residents need to support the agency when they vote on it next year.

But asphalt alone is not the answer. Widening roads is never-ending. Planners, for instance, have found that as soon as I-4 is widened to eight lanes, it would need to be widened to 10 lanes. The wider a road, the more cars it attracts.

No, better roads aren't the only answer. The Orlando area must think in terms of alternatives such as rapid transit and an improved bus system. It must think in terms of creating a transportation system. Right now the Orlando area doesn't have a transportation system. It has a transportation mess.